Web Design

The most meaningful information you have to share should be at the forefront of your website with options for next steps. Giving your visitor too many links, too many choices or too much information divides their attention and detracts from the bare essence of what you are trying to achieve. You’ve got to make it easy for them.

Google got it Right! Google. Now, this is a website we all can relate to. But imagine this … What if Google were a nonprofit? Here’s what its homepage could look like.

If your organization’s messages aren’t getting read, your constituents aren’t engaging. And if they aren’t engaging, they probably aren’t donating. Our quick check of nonprofit emails in our inboxes suggests that the vast majority are not mobile-friendly.

Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide and keynote speaker at the second annual Engage Conference, provided "3 Steps to Friendlier Fundraising Websites" in the January issue of FundRaising Success.

When you’re designing a new nonprofit website, there are a ton of things to think about. What do you want the website to do? What should it look like? Who’ll be involved in the project? How will you drive the right people to the site? But before getting into the details of your new website, it’s important to answer one key question: Who are you targeting with the new site?

This all-important question has implications for many facets of your project.

The easiest way to ensure that your website and blog are mobile-compatible is to embrace responsive design. Here is a selection of 11 exceptional, responsively designed nonprofit websites. Pay particular attention to Heifer International. Its new site is gorgeous. Hopefully, your nonprofit has a new website on your to-do list for 2014-15, and you can study and learn from the websites listed below.

Donation pages continue to be a central part of nonprofit website design. If you’ve succeeded in making strong calls to action that guide website visitors to your donate page, you should reward them with a compelling and easy-to-use donation experience. In this post, I’ve collected a few impressive donation pages to show you. I’ll walk through the first three in more detail and point out a few things that they’re doing right.

Vow to do less well and to keep that much up-to-date when it comes to your website. It's heresy, I suppose, but if your website is the window into your nonprofit, at least make sure the view it offers is current, exciting and inviting — even if it's not yet nirvana.

You know you cannot undermine the power of a well-built website. It’s your most powerful business card, a communication interface between you and your stakeholders. At some point all your donors, partners, volunteers and every person interested in your nonprofit organization will set foot on your website, so you better be prepared. I bet you’ve seen awesome websites and terrible ones, so here is a list of essential elements that will set any website on the right path.

If I told you that you could double your digital fundraising quite easily, wouldn’t it be stupid of you not to? I think everyone would agree. Yet the sorry state of affairs is this — donation forms stink, and people are not fixing them. When you move someone with a clever piece of fundraising communications, your donation pages are a deciding factor in whether you get that gift.

I recently talked with a nonprofit communications director whose challenge for 2014 is to remake her organization’s communications voice, style and tone from something that is, frankly, a little frightening to something much more friendly. Here are three approaches I recommended. Maybe you could try these too?